For Steven Rowe, spending an entire year living with a family in Ecuador and taking all his university courses in Spanish and Portuguese meant complete immersion in a new country and culture. A Gilman International Scholarship gave him the life-changing opportunity to leave his home state, where he attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for long enough to make Quito feel like home. “Before this I only knew my hometown,” Rowe says. “I now have a broader perspective of the world and how the United States influences it.”
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